The zombies standing between and the hole moved out of the way before I took my second step.
Who knew that sothing without a brain could be so smart?
I kept walking, watching the zombies shift back against the basent walls, leaving a clear path across the wet concrete floor straight toward the jagged black opening. It was like I was a living sacrifice to a God that I didn’t know.
Too bad they didn’t understand that I wasn’t the sacrifice....
I was the God.
Behind , several voices rose at once.
"Rouxi!"
"Stop!"
"Are you insane?"
That last one was absolutely Wei, because apparently the man had decided that shouting obvious questions counted as battlefield leadership.
Commander Li moved first, which I was beginning to understand was simply how the man functioned. He took one step after like he was fully prepared to throw himself between and whatever was waiting inside the hole again, and I almost sighed.
It was one thing to be noble once.
Doing the sa thing twice was starting to look like a dical condition that required treatnt.
Chenghai shifted at the sa ti, the pipe still in hand, while Zhenlan’s gaze cut between , the zombies, and the opening in the wall. Yuche and Lingyun didn’t move imdiately. They knew better. Or, more accurately, they knew better, which was not the sa thing but usually led to fewer argunts.
I stopped before anyone could grab and looked over my shoulder at the n protesting. "Are you really dumb enough to stand between and my fun?"
That shut down most of the room.
The soldiers stared at like they were trying to decide if I had lost my mind or if this was simply how I was all the ti.
The answer was yes, but that felt like a private matter.
Wei’s mouth opened, probably to say sothing loud and useless, but Li held up one hand without looking away from . Good. At least one person in this basent was learning.
Yuche’s expression didn’t change as he stepped back first, tal still curled around his arms and hands.
He didn’t like it. I could tell by the way his jaw tightened slightly and the way the rusted strips of pipe flexed around him like they wanted sothing to cut.
But he stepped back, because he understood that stopping would be a waste of everyone’s ti. I was stubborn like that when I made up my mind.
Lingyun sighed, loud enough that half the basent heard him. "Scream if you need us."
I waved one hand without turning around. "You’ll know."
"That is not reassuring."
"It wasn’t supposed to be."
I heard Chenghai swear under his breath, low and ugly, while Zhenlan said nothing at all. That was probably for the best.
If either of them started acting protective after spending half the day trying to get us killed for canned beans and camping supplies, I was going to have words. Possibly vines. Maybe both.
The first step into the hole was disgusting.
The floor changed from wet concrete to sothing softer under my boots, a mix of broken stone, mud, and black sli that stuck to the soles like rotten glue.
Warm air rolled over in slow waves, thick enough that every breath felt like licking the inside of an old lunch container soone forgot in a car during sumr. The sll was worse inside. Cow shit, old blood, spoiled at, wet dirt, and whatever ca after all of those things sat together too long and decided to beco a personality.
I had to swallow hard. Puking all over my feet was definitely not the image I was going for. But seriously... I was going to need sothing when I got ho to get the taste of this sll out of my mouth and nose.
The tunnel curved downward through the broken wall, wider than it had looked from the basent.
Jagged concrete gave way to packed earth within a few steps, and the pipes that had been ripped apart near the entrance disappeared into damp soil and dark streaks of sli. The walls were coated with a black, glossy goo that pulsed faintly whenever the thing deeper inside breathed.
I kept one hand slightly raised as I walked, not because I needed help, but because the baby vine had lifted itself from my wrist and was now watching the tunnel like it wanted to bite sothing.
What could I say? My baby knew a treasure when it slled it.
The sounds from the basent behind faded quickly. Not completely, but enough that the shouting and movent beca dull, like the tunnel had wrapped them in wet cloth. Ahead of , I could hear breathing. It wasn’t mine, and I didn’t know a single zombie that sounded like that.
It sounded like what I would imagine a swamp monster taking a breath of air. It whistled going in and sounded like a wet bubble withering with desperation coming out.
It was probably not my smartest decision, but I continued to follow the sound.
The tunnel opened into a chamber large enough that the hotel basent suddenly seed cozy by comparison. The ceiling rose into darkness, held up by thick bands of earth and broken concrete where the building’s foundation had been chewed through from below. Massive roots hung overhead in tangled ropes, so as thin as my wrist and so thicker than tree trunks, threading through the dirt ceiling and disappearing into the walls. Black sli coated everything. It ran down the roots, gathered in puddles, and stretched in sticky strands between chunks of concrete like the entire chamber had been wrapped in rotten syrup.
After that, the next thing that I noticed was the fact that there were no bones anywhere to be seen.
I was pretty disappointed in that.
TV had convinced that the ho of the big bad would have bones all over the place, telling the poor blonde that they walking into a place they didn’t want to be. That hint of ’these are the takeout containers of my past als... now you are next’.
But there was none of that here.
No skulls piled in corners. No ribs. No half-eaten bodies scattered around for dramatic effect. The floor was wet, filthy, and stained dark in more places than I cared to count, but it was completely devoid of everything that I wanted to see.
Frankly, this was just one more disappointnt on top of everything else.
That figured.
This thing couldn’t even do horror story properly.
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